Aimed at promoting innovation, the exercise would see nearly 10,000 students producing digital solutions to 598 problems, a release from the Ministry of Electronics and IT said.

The 598 problems have been identified and posted by 29 central government departments and include issues like geo-fencing of airports, online toll collection, smart traffic management, cyber attacks and smart drones to make the airspace safer.

The 36-hour non-stop digital programming competition would start at 8 a.m. on Saturday in 26 different locations in the country with each location handled by one central department or ministry.

The top three teams would be awarded Rs 1 lakh, Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000 respectively and the digital solutions so awarded would be used by the ministry/departments for improving their governance systems, if necessary, with suitable upgradation.

All the prize winners would be connected to form a Community of Innovative Minds. The hackathon also aims at improving awareness about patents in the country.

According to World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), India registers 40 patents per million population.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) pulled up Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea for warning subscribers of certain plans that their SIM cards would be deactivated if they do not recharge their pre-paid accounts though these subscribers had the minimum required balance.